PHOENIX – Pay attention, because this is a one-of-its-kind story, the kind you’ve never heard before, one you’re likely not to hear again. This is a tale about good manners and good faith on the recruiting trail. Yes. You heard that right. In a most treacherous game, this is a saga of gentlemanly agreements. Proof that nice guys, sometimes, really can finish first.

Kevin Stallings is the coach at Vanderbilt University, which took on Connecticut in an NCAA Phoenix Regional semifinal last night at America West Arena. For five years earlier in his career, Stallings was an assistant under Roy Williams at Kansas. Now, Williams is a polarizing personality among fans, but to the men who work for him, he is like Gandhi, a man so pure and good they almost see a glow around him.

Anyway, Stallings spotted a tall kid from Shawnee Mission, Kansas, who sparked his interest four years ago, a kid named Matt Freije. But Stallings also believed in certain professional proprieties.

We’ll let him pick up the story from here:

“We identified Matt early as a guy that we thought would be an outstanding college player and began the recruiting process with him,” Stallings said. “He was about 30 minutes from Kansas University, so I called Coach Williams – and this is not a call I would place to just anyone – and I said, ‘Listen, there is a kid from Kansas we are really going to try and recruit if you aren’t going to try to get him.’ “

“You mean the Freije kid?” Williams said.

Stallings said yes.

Williams said, “Well, as a matter of fact, I’m going to watch him play in the next day or two. I’ll let you know if we’re going to recruit him.”

Stallings again: “Coach called me back and said he knew why we really liked him, but they had Nick Collison already there, and Wayne Simien was already committed there, and so they weren’t going to recruit Matt. So I told Coach, ‘The only thing I would ask, Coach, is to promise not to change your mind.’ And he never did. So we got Matt.”

Good thing, too.

Coaching Vanderbilt is one of the impossible jobs in all of college basketball, a books-first school without the basketball tradition of Duke or Stanford, playing in the relentlessly renegade Southeastern Conference. It isn’t easy to win the right way in the SEC. Stallings, with a big assist from Freije, did this year, racking up a 23-9 record heading into tonight’s challenge with the Huskies. Freije averaged 18.7 points and was at his best in the Commodores’ tournament wins over Western Michigan and N.C. State.

All thanks to a gentleman’s agreement for which Freije couldn’t be more grateful.

“My family would have liked me to have been recruited by Kansas since it’s so close,” he said. “Luckily, they didn’t. I wouldn’t trade the four years I’ve had here for anything. It all worked out for the best.”